Trevor Cook wrote a great post today on “corporate speak” and his top ten most hated words and phrases. I chuckled while reading it cuz I probably use most of them in every meeting. I’ll have to change my ways! Trevor calls them “mutual masturbation”. (For the record, I have nothing against mutual masturbation between consenting adults.)
1. Solution - a (tech?) marketing invention a few years back and now everything is a solution. In fact, there seem to be many more solutions than problems these days. One of my local butchers offers 'meal solutions', good grief.
2. Flexible - Doesn't mean anything. Better to say what choice you offer or how you will be flexible rather than just a bland 'we're flexible'. Internally, of course, flexible is code for "I'm now going to make you do part of someone else's job as well as your own'.
3. Customer focused - golly gee, isn't everyone? Much better to say what you do and let the customers decide how focused you are. This is a classic example of a corporate expression which seems to carry great meaning for the managers and their advisers but leaves the customers none the wiser.
4. Best practice - OK at first but worked to death. Replaced 'continuous improvement' another shocker. Management consultants are always coming up with new buzz phrases to make the tasks involved in increasing sales while reducing costs seem more mysterious than they really are.
5. Going forwards - There is a special dark spot of antagonism in my heart for this shocker. My blood runs cold. I suspect it has its origins in the US military. Especially when people talk about 'our strategy going forwards' as opposed, one fancies, to our 'strategy going backwards'.
6. Anything that compares people to assets - as in we value our people, our people are our biggest asset. People ARE not assets, they are people. People feel diminished when they are described as assets, it puts you on a par with a building or a metal implement.
7. Value-add - stale and dated. Contribution does just fine.
8. Aim, intend, etc - words that avoid responsibility while looking like they might sound purposeful. Similarly passive phrases presented pompously like 'The decision to reduce overheads followed a detailed consideration of the balance sheet going forwards' instead of 'this factory is losing money hand over fist and we need to cut some costs'.
9. American sporting analogies - 'playbook', 'game plan' and so on. Yuck.
10. Globalisation - no-one knows what it means, all definitions are vacuous. Its a real turn off for ordinary people - it is either meaningless or negative (as in job losses). Most people are primarily interested in family, friends, local community and workplace. Globalisation holds no appeal whatsoever.
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